Ovi Magazine Issue #26: WWI - 100 years - Published: 2014-07-28

individuals.” Indeed, science deals with beings and particulars, philosophy deals with
Being and the universal. The universal may be an abstraction but does it follow that it is
no less real than the particular, at least in the human world of the intelligible? To deny
the reality of the world of the intelligible is to deny the whole Platonic Western tradition.
And so, we are back to the world of the two cultures: scientism and positivism vs.
Liberal Arts and Humanism. A Leonardo Da Vinci conceived no such dichotomy and
could be a scientist and an artist at the same time. The positivists tell us that religion and
philosophy, the liberal arts and the humanities are superseded and only science counts
nowadays. To the contrary, Vico, and probably Marx and Hobsbaum also, would suggest
to the brave entrepreneurs of our brave new world, the new barbarians of the intellect,
that far for being a stand for progress, their stand is a stand for regress and decadence.
So the question is this: Is it not high time for a new science, a new renaissance and a
new civilization? Without it the present crisis can only worsen. In 2014, one hundred
years after World War I, at the very end of the 20 th century we’ll have to finally decide
whether or not to continue with the fallacies of the 20 th century as outlined in this essay
or charter a new paradigm for a new Renaissance. Time is running out, the arctic icecup
is melting as we speak, and not to decide will be a decision in itself. We cannot run
away from our destiny buttressed by free will. As Alessandro Manzoni put it: “Ai posteri
l’ardua sentenza” [the answer belongs to posterity]; that is certainly true, however, we
as a civilization, Western so called, will in some way, directly or indirectly influence
the future answer to the question; in fact the right question cannot even be asked unless
one is knowledgeable of one’s past. The past, the present and the future are inextricably
intertwined and history, far from being dead, is part of the human condition and will
remain with us till the end of time.